A blog on various topics in C++ programming including language features, standards, idioms, design patterns, functional, and OO programming.

Sunday, May 06, 2007

iterator tags idiom and compile-time algorithm selection

Compile-time algorithm selection can be done using function overloading and traits idiom. It is a quite useful technique in generic programming. In this technique usually a set of "selector" types are used to select one among many overloaded functions. Note that the number of parameters to these overloaded functions is same but there is a "selector" type at the end of the parameter list. A use of that technique based on standard defined iterator tags is shown here.